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About Me

Mindy

I love to cook and love to try new cultural recipes from around the world and the United States. This is where I document my successes and failures and try to make good homemade food accessible to cooks of all levels.
Email me at mindy(at)theworldinmykitchen(dot)com.

Thursday, July 5, 2012

Wow...has it been over two weeks since I last posted?! It's been a crazy summer, and until last Friday, I was home alone for three weeks with my kids. And then suddenly everyone started arriving! My parents arrived on Friday morning for a short visit from California, and my husband returned home after being in Germany and Belgium for three weeks. I had a great visit with my parents (as did the kids!), but it didn't leave much time for keeping up the ol' blog. I'm back, though, at least for now, as we leave for England and Scotland for a week on Saturday. Yahoo!

But in the meantime, I'd like to whet your appetite with this little gem. I've been working on perfecting this recipe since May, and I think I may have finally hit the nail on the head! This Lemon-Blackberry Yogurt Loaf is quite simple and great for potlucks and breakfast alike. If you don't happen to have wild blackberries lying around, feel free to substitute regular blackberries, blueberries or raspberries. (I happen to have some frozen wild blackberries leftover from picking last summer.) Or you could just leave them out for a basic lemon loaf--I think the best version I made, though, was with the berries. :-) Either way, I recommend doubling your batch because the first cake will go quicker than you'd like!

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Spray the inside of a loaf pan with cooking spray or coat with butter. Dust with flour and tap out excess.

Whisk 1 1/2 cups flour, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl. In the bowl of your stand mixer, add the sugar and lemon zest. Mix with your fingertips until the sugar is moistened. Add the lemon juice, yogurt, vegetable oil, olive oil, eggs, and vanilla extract and mix to blend. Add the dry ingredients and mix until just blended. Coat the blackberries in 1 tablespoon of flour and then add them to the batter. Mix gently until incorporated.

Pour the batter into the loaf pan and smooth the top. Bake until the cake is golden and a toothpick comes out clean, about 50 minutes. Let the cake cool on a wire rack for a few minutes and then remove from pan. Let it cool completely on the wire rack.

@Anonymous, I've made this with all vegetable oil and all olive oil, but found the all-olive-oil version too strong with the olive oil flavor (drowned out the lemon flavor) and found that it was missing a little something with no olive oil. Basically, it's a flavor preference. :-)

I can't wait to hear more about your trip to England and Scotland - the pictures on Facebook are awesome! This loaf will definitely be made in our house by the end of the summer - maybe after berry picking =)

I never knew that there's such thing as a yogurt loaf. I first heard about this in a long island weight loss center and it's proven effective. The taste is also great! Wow, blueberry and lemon is an unusual blend but I surely wouldn't let this pass without trying it. Thanks!